


Wormhole Express to Cardiff

by ChronicBookworm



Category: Stargate SG-1, Torchwood
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Flirting, M/M, Scientific Inaccuracies, inter-agency cooperation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25970806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChronicBookworm/pseuds/ChronicBookworm
Summary: SG-1 steps through the Stargate and ends up in Cardiff, Wales. It’s not quite where they were expecting to be, and the people they meet there are surprisingly unsurprised about people showing up out of thin air.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 12
Kudos: 85
Collections: Crossworks 2020





	Wormhole Express to Cardiff

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Requiem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Requiem/gifts).



> Set before Disclosure of SG-1 and half-way through season 2 of Torchwood. CoE and Miracle Day are being blatantly ignored!

They were adapting to Jonas, and learning to work around the hole Daniel had left in the team. For all Jack hadn’t wanted him on the team, Jonas brought a new and much needed perspective, the soft curiosity required when meeting other cultures. Jack was aware that he could just as well have described Daniel with that – that if he wasn’t careful, it might start to reek of getting a new goldfish to replace the one that died. But then, he’d never had a goldfish sacrifice himself to save another goldfish and then the surviving goldfish had to take the dead goldfish’s place. The metaphor might have gotten away from him a bit. Point being, they were learning how to work with each other. Starting to know where the others would be when they stepped out of the Stargate, could anticipate each other’s reactions, that sort of thing. The thing that made a team, a team.

So when they stepped through the Stargate, expecting to end up on P4X-933, but instead ended up in a wide open plaza by a tourist harbor, just a twitch of his fingers had the team with their hands casually near their weapons, but not actually drawing them, trying to look harmless while actually on high alert. There were some high-rise buildings in the background, and the architecture looked like Earth – and modern Earth at that. It was very unlikely that architecture would develop in the same way on two different planets. Sure, there were only so many things you could do with four walls and a roof (unless you made a circle and a roof), but even on Kelowna, the planet that had come closest to matching Earth, things looked just a bit… off. Daniel would probably have been able to explain architectural influences, the details that set buildings apart, could probably even tell them if they were on their own Earth (and if so, where), or an Earth where history had taken just the tiniest twist, zigged when their Earth had zagged, that sort of thing, but Jack only knew that it looked normal to him. Not a place he’d been, but a place he could have been, could have gone on holiday to.

Teal’c was the one who noticed the man striding towards them first, and subtly alerted the rest of them. He was handsome, in a traditional movie-star sort of way, but what was the most eye-catching was the outfit he wore – a World War 2 RAF fighter pilot uniform. Jack felt himself take an instant dislike to this man – he’d never held any truck with the sort of man who worshiped the World War 2 fighters without having been one himself. Most of the people who held that particular affectation tended to be not worth the mud their fathers, grandfathers or great grandfathers had trudged through. Well, at least the uniform put them definitely on Earth – there were just too many details that couldn’t have been replicated on another planet. Now they just needed to work out if they were in the right dimension and the right time.

“Howdy,” he called when the “RAF pilot” was close enough. “Jack O’Neill, US Air Force.”

“Jack Harkness, Torchwood Institute,” the other man said with a flirtatious grin and held out a hand. Jack took it. Harkness squeezed a bit – not, Jack though, to establish dominance, but more of an appreciative squeeze. He wasn’t quite sure how, but the man had managed to make shaking hands somehow sexual. “Pleased to meet you. And who are your charming companions?”

Jack introduced them one by one, and Harkness gave each of them equal appreciation – man and woman, human and alien alike (although, he supposed that was unfair – nothing about Jonas marked him as an alien, and Teal’c’s mark could well have been done by humans – people did weirder things to their bodies than carve out a piece of flesh and fill it with gold. Not _much_ weirder, but still. Weirder.)

“So, Mr. Harkness, as you might have noticed, we’re a little lost,” Jack said, seeing no reason to delay the inevitable. “Would you mind telling us where we are? If I’m not interrupting,” he added, as he noticed Jack still hadn’t let go of Teal’c’s hand.

“Oh, honey, you can interrupt any time you want,” he said, finally releasing Teal’c hand with a final squeeze. Then he turned businesslike. “We’re in Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom.” A pause. His eyes went to the patches on their shoulders – the ones with the planet and the Stargate symbol for Earth. “Earth.”

Darn. Jack hated dealing with observant civilians. The obtuse ones could be fobbed off so much more easily.

“Damn it. I told you we should have taken a left at Albuquerque,” Jack said to Carter. She looked extremely unimpressed.

“I take it you’re not where you expected to be?” Harkness asked.

“Well, it’s good to know we’re not in Oz,” Jack said. “But we’re not in Kansas either.”

Harkness seemed to weigh a few things in his mind.

“Why don’t you join us at our HQ? We can speak more frankly there.”

Well, that wasn’t ominous at all.

Jack made a “lead on” gesture with his hand.

“We’d be honored,” he said.

Harkness led them down to a rickety old shack that proclaimed itself to be a tourist office. It also proclaimed its opening hours were: “Not when inconvenient.” That didn’t seem like it would be good for the tourism industry in Cardiff. There were directions to the main Cardiff tourist information center, a mile and a half away near Cardiff Castle, which was a bit of a trek to get your brochures.

There was another man, younger than Harkness, in a tidy, nondescript suit manning the tourist office. He and Harkness communicated wordlessly, and then he pressed a button and a secret door opened behind them.

“Thanks, love,” Harkness said with a wink at the young man. “Can always rely on you for the best service.” He turned to the group and quirked a smile. “Welcome to Torchwood. Next time, I’ll take you in through the scenic route – if you behave.”

The secret doorway opened to a long, dark tunnel, with rough stone wall. Jack knew secret underground bases, and this was an insult to secret bases everywhere. Couldn’t they at least get proper lighting? What was this – a secret KGB base? The catacombs of Paris?

The elevator ride was shorter than in to the SGC, he noted. They must not be as far below ground. The base itself was a large, open cavern, with tiling on the walls, a waterfall in middle – probably the same one as on the plaza – and several workstations with computers. There were gadgets and knickknacks scattered all over the place – it looked like Daniel’s office, except not contained to one space, but spread over the entire base. They were definitely not running on military efficiency, that was for sure. But he had to give them this, despite the lackluster passage to get there; they had the more impressive base. The SGC looked like any military complex, except for the Stargate itself – which wouldn’t look out of place here. This base had character. And a pterodactyl, apparently. It screeched and flew towards them before soaring up into the rafters again. Given that they had no prehistoric extinct dinosaurs living in the SGC, he had to give Torchwood the win on that one.

There were three other people in the base – two women, and one man, all at computers. Harkness introduced them as Toshiko Sato, Gwen Cooper, and Owen Harper. All three looked at SG-1 with a mix of curiosity and mistrust. Jack realized he hadn’t introduced the younger man upstairs – was he a less important member of the team, or had Harkness just thought it wasn’t the moment?

“Do you mind locking your guns up while you’re here?” Cooper asked. Jack looked at Harkness, but he didn’t contract her or try to smooth things over, so he must want them to as well.

“As a matter of fact, we do. I’m generally against being unarmed in the bases of unknown organizations. I’m sure you understand.”

“And I’m generally against letting unknown organizations tromp around my base with assault rifles. I’m sure you understand,” Harkness replied, and Jack had to fight to keep the irritation off his face. He didn’t appreciate having his own words thrown back at him, although he supposed it was only fair, the amount of times he did it to other people. Don’t dish it if you can’t take it, as his mother used to say.

“How about we just get rid of the assault rifles,” Jonas suggested. “We keep the handguns, the same way you’ve got handguns, and then everyone is on the same level, arms-wise.”

That… was actually a reasonable suggestion, and Jack quirked an eyebrow at Harkness to see if he would take it. After a brief look at Cooper, who didn’t look too happy, he nodded.

“So, let’s work out the mystery of your untimely arrival, shall we?” Harkness suggested. “Pull up a chair, gather round.”

There weren’t enough chairs for all of them, so Jack kept standing. He threw a look at Teal’c and thought he might perhaps have preferred standing too, but he sat down on one of the high chairs Torchwood used to be polite.

“So, where are you from?” Harper asked.

“US Air Force base in Colorado,” Jack said.

“Ooh, what do you do there?” Sato wondered with mild excitement.

“Deep space telemetry,” Sam replied.

“You don’t look like deep space telemetrists,” Harper commented.

“And what do they look like?” Jack asked.

“Not like you.”

“How would you know? What even are you? What is this place?”

“This is Torchwood,” Harkness said again, and for a moment, Jack thought he wasn’t going to get more out of him, then he said. “We monitor a Rift in space-time in and around Cardiff.”

A Rift in space-time. Huh. Carter would be over the moon at the possibility (metaphorically speaking). But at least it meant that this little mishap might not be laid at their feet.

Jonas had been tracking the pterodactyl with his eyes, and said:

“I thought those were supposed to be extinct. Unless I missed something?” he flicked his eyes to Carter, as if she could tell him why this organization had a pterodactyl flying around their secret base. He wasn’t doing a great job of blending in as an Earthling, but at least he hadn’t gone and said something stupid like “your planet” yet.

“No, they are,” she confirmed. “Unless your Rift has brought us into a different dimension?”

“Do you often travel to different dimensions?” Cooper asked. God damn it. The thing Jack liked the least – observant _and_ intelligent civilians. It always led to serving up mountains-worth of NDAs and still worrying that the secret would leak.

“Oh yeah,” he said to throw them off the trail. “We have time-shares in a cottage on Oz. Much better place to go to now it’s rid of the witch infestation.”

“Funny,” said Harper, tone indicating he meant the exact opposite.

Sam and Sato spent some time comparing historical events, to make sure that they were in their own dimension, Sam dancing around the Goa’uld, and Sato having her own seemingly weird questions that must refer to events that Torchwood were keeping secret. It was a bit disconcerting to know that there were alien events that Stargate Command had no idea about. He definitely needed to speak to Hammond when they got back.

“I think we can confirm that we are in our own dimension,” Sam said at last. “There don’t seem to be any other versions of us with different histories around.”

“That is reassuring,” Teal’c said. No entropic cascade failure to worry about, then.

“So if this is our dimension, and we’re on your planet, what’s to stop us from just… going home?” Jonas asked, and Jack had to close his eyes. He didn’t miss how both Harkness and Cooper picked up on how Jonas said “ _our_ dimension” but “ _your_ planet”, and probably Harper and Sato did too, but they were harder to see from his angle. “You have fast travel, right?”

“Great idea. We can make Ianto book them tickets,” Harper said.

“We can’t,” Sam said. “There’s a reason we got pulled into the Rift, we don’t know if it will happen to others, or how to stop it.”

“What she said,” Jack told the Torchwood team, both to present a unified front, and because if Torchwood wanted them gone, he wanted to stay (he was petty like that).

“Why is nobody picking up on the fact he said ‘ _your_ ’ planet?” Cooper asked.

“What, you’ve never see an alien before?” Jack demanded. He was damned if he was going to let some small-time Welsh "Rift monitor" insult _his_ team.

Strangely enough, her eyes flicked to Harkness for just one second. Huh.

Well, since the cat was out of the bag, Jack said reluctantly:

“We should probably contact the base to see if they can help us.”

“And who would ‘the base’ be?” Harkness asked sharply.

“Stargate Command,” Jack was forced to explain. “A branch of the US military dedicated to extra-terrestrial threats.”

“I’ve never heard of them,” Sato commented. “Maybe Ianto has?”

Was Ianto the young man upstairs, or was there yet another member of their team who they hadn’t met?

Harkness shook his head.

“No, if Torchwood knew about Stargate Command, I would know.” He turned to Jack. “You have a secret branch of the military to deal with extra-terrestrial threats? Without informing the international community?” Harkness demanded.

Jack looked meaningfully around their underground base in the middle of Cardiff. He waved a hand around laconically.

“I have a vague feeling there’s something here about glass houses and stones. Carter, someone, help me out.”

“Those who live in houses of glass should not throw stones,” Teal’c said.

“That’s the one.”

“We have a mutual information-sharing agreement with UNIT,” Harkness said. “And if you have one as well, we would have heard about you.”

“Should I know what UNIT is?” Jonas asked.

“Unified Intelligence Taskforce,” Harkness answered. “The UN organization that deals with extra-terrestrial threats.”

“There are sure a lot of organizations devoted to extra-terrestrial threats on Earth,” Jack commented.

“And usually we all know about each other, so we don’t step on any toes or get in each other’s way. If not you, then someone in your organization should definitely know about UNIT.”

“I’ll bash some heads in when we get back,” Jack promised, although it was likely that whoever knew about UNIT outranked him by quite a bit, so head-bashing seemed unlikely.

The young man from the tourist office came down with a large tray and distributed coffees to the others. Harkness’ eyes lit up.

“Have I introduced you to Ianto Jones, the light of my life and the man who singe-handedly keeps the base running?”

“I didn’t know how you take your coffee, so I thought better just bring the milk and sugar down, and you can help yourself,” Jones said, handing out cups, rather than responding to Harkness’ over-the-top introduction, before continuing: “And I’m sure the rest of you could manage to get your own coffee without me. Probably.”

“But we’d get horribly lost in the archives and die of starvation,” Cooper said.

“And that would be a terrible shame,” Harkness said. “Starvation’s a terrible way to die.”

“Speaking from experience?” Harper sniped. “I guess you would know.”

“Owen!” Cooper snapped. Both Sato and Jones winced. Harkness, out of all of them, looked strangely unaffected. That was interesting, and he wondered what that was all about.

Throughout it, Jack had kept silent, observing the interplay between the team. They had the same closeness that developed between gate team members, the kind where you’d been through hell together, and no matter the disagreements between you, you knew you could count on the others to have your back, but theirs was looser, less hierarchical and less professional. Which made sense, if they weren’t professional military.

Unsurprisingly, Sam led the work in figuring out what had gone wrong with the rift. Sato seemed to be the Torchwood brainiac, and soon the two of them were happy in science-land, leaving the rest of them to lounge about. Jack called the SGC, and managed to convey what had happened, and that they would give more details on their return to a very worried Walter, who promised to let General Hammond know.

He came back out of Harkness’ office, which had been leant to him for the illusion of privacy (although Jack was absolutely 100% certain that the call had been taped and would be listened to once they’d left), just in time to see Harkness lean over Jones to grab something off his desk, leaning in close, one hand on Jones’ hip, taking the opportunity to whisper something in Jones’ ear. It would definitely count as harassment if Jones made any sign he was uncomfortable with it, but as it was he just rolled his eyes and smiled slightly. He even leaned his head back so he could hear Harkness better. Nobody from the Torchwood team batted an eye at this behavior, but Jack could tell that SG1 were uncomfortable – especially Sam and he, who had the UCMJ drilled into them over and over. Harkness’ behavior definitely counted as fraternization, and disgraced the uniform he wore (fake as it was, it still conferred certain _standards_ ).

“Good news and bad news,” Sam said. “Good news is we’ve worked out what happened – the Stargate system seems to have connected to the Rift somehow.”

“Bad news, we don’t know how to fix it,” Sato filled in.

“Even worse,” Carter continued, “it’s not just our Stargate. All Stargates in the galaxy will eventually end up here.”

“You mean, all the Jaffa, and all the Goa’uld,” Jack asked, just to make sure. “Here, in Cardiff.”

“It seems so, sir,” she confirmed.

“I don’t know what a Jaffa or a Goold is,” Cooper said, “but that sounds bad. At least, by Jaffa I'm assuming you don't mean the biscuit.”

"Cake," at least two voices from the Torchwood team corrected her instantly. 

“It would indeed be very bad,” Teal’c said, addressing her main point rather than whatever side argument was about to devolve among their Welsh counterparts.

“The Goa’uld are alien parasites that take over your brains, and Jaffa are their servants,” Jonas explained. “We’ve been fighting them all across the galaxy.”

“And they’re all coming here for a party,” Jack said. “So buckle up, kids.”

“Funny enough,” Harkness said, “Torchwood has been operational since Queen Victoria’s time, and we haven’t brought so much as _one_ interstellar war here. How long did you say the SGC has been operational?”

“Well…” Sato said and trailed off. Jones looked away and down. Teal’c raised an eyebrow.

“Torchwood One stuff doesn’t count,” Harper said defensively. Jack made a mental not to look up when and how Torchwood One had brought an interstellar war to Earth, and if it was something he could possibly hold against them. Anything that could bring Harkness down a perch or two was good in his book.

“Can’t you just reverse the polarity of the neutron flow?” Harkness asked. “It always seemed to work for-” he bit himself off, and after throwing a glance at SG1 continued: “someone I knew.”

Sato and Harper exchanged looks, as did Cooper and Jones. Whoever Harkness meant, they knew who this man or woman was, and had mixed feelings about them.

“It’s not quite that simple,” Sato said.

“Wormholes don’t work on neutron flows,” Sam said. “Not as such, at least. They’re a tunnel from one end of space to another.”

“Whereas the Rift isn’t quite a wormhole, but close. It has no defined endpoint. So there’s nothing to reverse.”

Jack was getting dizzy listening to the two of them bounce science babble between them. At least Sam would come out of this with a new friend.

“Right,” Sam agreed, before she got a look in her eyes. “But what if we…” She trailed off and scribbled something on a piece of paper.

Jack looked over and saw an equation that he could probably begin to parse, if he had a couple of hours. Jack was by no means stupid, even if he pretended to be sometimes because it was easier if people underestimated him, but Sam left him miles behind, and it seemed Sato was of the same kind. She looked excited and took over the paper to make some changes or additions to Sam’s equations.

“That might work!” she said. “I think we’ve got something in the archives that could work as a base. Ianto, do you know where the Change-Transportation Alterer from Sontar is?”

“No problem, I can get that for you,” said Jones and disappeared behind a door. He returned some minutes later with a mass of wires and metal that was half as tall as he was, and the two women immediately fell on it and began rewiring it.

“I have no idea what you’re doing, but I’m willing to be muscle if it’s needed,” Jack offered.

“I don’t think so, sir. This is quite delicate work,” Sam said, holding the end of a wire in place as Sato looped the other end around the doohickey.

“Well, this is way above at least my head. Who else feels outclassed?” Harper asked. The Torchwood team immediately raised their hands, and, after a beat, so did SG-1, Jack included.

“Better leave them to it,” Jones said. “Can I get you anything while we wait?”

“Or, we could give you a guided tour around Cardiff,” Harkness suggested. “I know how to show you a good time. What do you say, Hot Stuff?”

He looked at all of them, but his eyes lingered on Teal’c, who raised an eyebrow and tilted his head slightly downwards. Was he actually interested?

There might have been more, and Jack was interested to see if Teal’c actually would have ended up with a guided tour of Cardiff, or if “showing a good time” was as euphemistic as Harkness’ tone implied (given the lack of reaction from anyone else in Torchwood, Jack thought it might actually be entirely innocent, because surely they wouldn't put up with that level of workplace inappropriateness from their boss. _Surely_ ), but they were interrupted by an alarm.

“That’s the Rift alarm,” Cooper told the SG-1 team. “Means something’s coming through.”

The Torchwood team turned to look at a monitor almost by rote, as if they did it all the time (they probably did), and Jack noticed with a sinking stomach that those were Jaffa.

“Bad news,” he said. “Those are not friendlies and will kill everyone around if we don’t do something about it.”

The Jaffa looked nonplussed for a moment, before lowering their staff weapons and starting to fire, because that was how Jaffa responded to situations they didn’t understand.

“Can we have out weapons back?” he asked, and Cooper went to unlock the safe they had been stored in, as Jones helped Harkness into the greatcoat that came with the uniform. It seemed like an unnecessary affectation to Jack, especially when they were in a hurry to get up there, but it had the air of a ritual, so he supposed he couldn’t really begrudge them that, however much he wanted to. He did, however, take some deliberate steps towards the exit, to mark that they should hurry up.

“Oh no, we’re taking the fast way up. Also, the promised scenic route,” Harkness said. “Gather round, everyone. Tosh, Major Carter, why don’t you stay here and work on closing the Rift? The rest of us will deal with this newest infestation.”

The piece of ground they were standing on started slowly rising up. Well, that was another tally in favor of the Torchwood base – the Mountain didn’t have its own secret lift to the ground level. But then, the SGC also didn’t have inexplicable walkways and water running all over it – some thought had gone into the SGC layout and design, whereas Torchwood just seemed to have happened.

“How are we going to retcon this?” Cooper asked on the way up. Jack decided not to ask – yet.

“We can’t,” said Harkness. “Not entirely.”

“I’ll put out a cover story on the internet – something about a sci-fi convention at the Roald Dahl Centre getting out of hand. It’s not like I have a lot to do, or anything,” Jones said dryly.

“You know we love and appreciate everything you do,” Cooper said, and Harper pulled a face. Clearly not everyone agreed.

“Especially some of us,” Harkness said suggestively. “And especially the way you fill out a suit.”

Jones rolled his eyes, but smiled fondly.

“Yes, Jack, I love you too.”

By this point, they were at the surface. They split off, Cooper and Jones to herd people to safety, and the rest of them to open fire and drive the Jaffa back. The Torchwood team was surprisingly effective, given that they only had handguns, not P90s or zats. They didn’t handle a shoot-out with any more professionalism than Jack had seen before, however. He wasn’t sure what he expected. Even Jonas and Daniel, consummate civilians with no military training beyond what they had at the SGC, knew to keep focused on the enemy in high-pressure situations. Clearly, Harkness had not got the memo.

“You handle that staff like a thing of beauty,” he told Teal’c.

“My thanks, Captain Harkness,” Teal’c responded.

The main problem with the shoot-out was the wide open space of the harbor area, and that there were so many civilians around. Cooper was herding them away like a police at a major disaster, which he supposed was not a bad analogy, and Jones was helping, but less authoritatively. He supposed the jump from coffee and admin to crowd control was larger than from whatever Cooper did for the organization. But the lack of cover was going to bite them on the ass, and Jack looked around for a more strategic location to try and lure the Jaffa towards. He was just about to call for SG-1 (and hopefully Torchwood as well) to fall back to the red brick building, when Jonas gave out a cry and collapsed, holding his leg. Immediately, Harper was by his side.

“Looks like the wound’s been cauterized,” he said, making a makeshift bandage. “Which is good. But I’d better get you down to the infirmary. Cover us,” he told the rest of them.

“I can do you one better.”

Harkness threw his leather wristband at Harper, and with a few pushes on various buttons, Harper and Jonas disappeared.

It was fairly evident that SG-1 had more combat experience than Torchwood, and were more comfortable in open fire fights, but Torchwood, especially Harkness, were holding up well, which both impressed and annoyed Jack. Mostly impressed, though. He appreciated competence. By this point, Cooper and Jones had gotten most of the civilians out of the way, and could join Jack, Teal’c and Harkness trying to get to the big red brick building to take cover.

Speaking of competence, Sam and Sato suddenly appeared in the spot he knew the lift was. They were carrying what Jack vaguely recognized as the whatchamacallit they’d played around with earlier, but it was almost twice as large, and had substantially more buttons and levers.

“Herd the Jaffa towards the Rift,” Sato shouted, and Jack had to reverse course, instead of drawing the Jaffa away from the center of the plaza, towards it. Sato and Sam put the finishing touches on the complicated doodad they were setting up in the center, and when the Jaffa were all centered, Sam pulled a lever and Sato pushed a big red button, and the Jaffa were gone.

“Did you manage to build that while we were up here?” Cooper asked in disbelief.

“Well, most of it was already in place,” Sato said. “We just fiddled a bit with the wiring.”

“Uh huh,” Cooper replied skeptically.

“We figured out how to use the Change-Transportation Alterer to anchor the ending point of the wormhole to the beginning again, making it a closed loop,” Sam explained. “We basically folded it back to the start, and since wormholes are unidirectional, they ended up where they started.”

“So you’re saying you reversed the polarity,” Harkness said.

Sato sighed.

“Yes, Jack. We reversed the polarity of the wormhole.”

Sam shrugged.

“Or close enough. But this is not a solution – the Stargate system is still connected to the rift, and everyone and everything that goes through a Stargate will end up here. The Change-Transportation Alterer will send them back, but eventually the Goa’uld will come by ships to destroy the Rift and make their infrastructure work again.”

Harkness snorted.

“Good luck with that. You can blast the Earth into dust or off into another galaxy, this Rift isn’t going anywhere.”

They spent some time clearing up upstairs, and Torchwood interfaced with local law enforcement – it turned out that Cooper had once been a colleague of theirs, so that went better than many times SG1 had tried it, although he noticed the same resistance to the “we are authorized to deal with stuff you aren’t” line. Police were the same everywhere, he supposed.

Back in the base, Harper had bandaged Jonas’s leg properly, and was currently typing something on the computer.

“How are you?” Jack asked. “Still alive?”

Jonas laughed.

“Still alive, doing fine. It doesn’t even hurt,” he said cheerfully. “Owen is a very good doctor.”

Harper looked at his team.

“Surprisingly, since most of his patients are dead,” Jones said.

“If you want to be my patient and be dead, that can be arranged,” Harper sniped.

“Children, children, let’s not fight,” Cooper said, when Harkness made no move to step between them, looking rather amused if anything at the interplay.

“Yeah, there’s lots of other ways we can turn our energies,” he said with a wink to Jonas. “Some of them even involve a hospital bed, to make up for you being stuck here.”

“It’s just a burn,” Jonas said. “I’ll be fine.”

Jack wasn't sure if he missed the innuendo, or if he chose to ignore it. Jonas wasn't stupid, and he was an amazingly quick learner, otherwise there was no way Jack would even contemplate having him on his team, but certain obvious things did tend to fly by him, due to the lack of cultural context clues.

“You’ll keep your weight off it, is what you’ll do,” Harper said in a no-nonsense tone of voice. The gruff manner seemed to suit him in his own domain, and he’d done well with what must have been an unknown injury to him. Not nearly on the level of Janet, but not bad. Jack felt his estimation of Torchwood rise a notch, despite the unprofessional impression they gave off.

The brain twins had set up shop with a new doodad, working off the old one. It was apparently meant to sever the connection between the Stargate system and the rift, rather than just reverse it, and again left the rest of them with little to do. Harkness, of course, made some suggestive comments at Teal’c before receiving a phone call from UNIT that he had to take.

“Does it bother you?” Teal’c asked. “That your boyfriend flirts with others in such a way?”

The way he said ‘boyfriend’ told Jack that Teal’c was also not entirely certain what Jones and Harkness were to each other. Their physical closeness and Harkness’s comments suggested they were boyfriends, because frankly, they would be more than just unadvised, they would be illegal if they weren’t, and Jones had said he loved Harkness – Jones did not strike Jack as the demonstrative type to say he loved someone if it wasn’t absolutely, 100% serious, of the rings and bells kind of serious, and this was said casually, so it obviously wasn’t the first time he’d said it. Everything pointed to them being a couple. But he seemed amused when Jack basically propositioned other people, when he offered to show Teal’c a “good time” and admired his “staff handling skills” and suggested they turn their energies into ways that included hospital beds with Jonas, so either Harkness hadn’t meant anything seriously, or they were non-exclusive, or they weren’t together at all.

“Jack… doesn’t see sex and sexuality quite like most people do. He flirts with anything with a pulse,” Jones said fondly. “He just wants to share a moment of connection with you, if you’ll allow it. It doesn’t bother me, because at the end of the day, he comes home to _me_ and nobody else, but let me know if it bothers you, and I’ll tell him to dial it back. Unfortunately I can’t tell him to turn it off completely. Jack is Jack.”

“I am not bothered,” said Teal’c.

The solution, when Sam and Sato presented it, was simple. Oh, sure, it was way beyond Jack’s understanding and extremely complex scientifically, but it consisted of a modified whatchamacallit, that was apparently meant to be pointed at the Rift when a wormhole was active.

“That seems easy enough.”

“The problem is,” Sam said, “we haven’t figured out how to do it safely. This isn’t like when we ‘reversed the polarity’,” Jack could almost see how much it pained her to say those words, but six years of dumbing things down for him had left their mark. “There is a high chance that activating the Change-Transportation Alterer with all its modifications will kill you as the effects cascade through the Rift itself.”

Harkness gave a short laugh.

“That’ll be the day,” he said. “If it does kill me, I’ll have a party in whatever afterlife awaits me. But I’ll bet you it doesn’t.”

“Bet us what?” Jack asked, never one to back down from a challenge.

Harkness’ eyes lit up.

“Oh, you should not have made that offer,” Cooper said. “Let's just say it probably won't and leave it at that.”

“Ruin my fun,” Harkness said cheerfully. “But never mind. Next time the Rift spews out aliens in chain mail with long staffs, I’ll go up and turn the thing on.”

Jones looked slightly worried, so he added:

“I’ll get changed first, I know what a bother it is to have the coat cleaned.”

“Because that's the part that worries me,” Jones said dryly. Still, none of Torchwood seemed as concerned as Jack would have expected, on their leader basically saying he would go out and probably meet his death, and none of them were trying to come up with alternate plans. It made him wonder, did they know something he didn’t, about the Rift, or about Harkness himself?

Harkness took the doohickey up, to be ready when the wormhole engaged again, and Jack went to call the SGC to tell them to engage the wormhole, which seemed more efficient and smarter than waiting for the wormhole to engage naturally and send Jaffa through.

“We should watch on the screens to make sure it worked,” Sam said.

“No,” Jones and Harper said sharply at the same time, and then glared at each other.

“I’ll watch it,” said Sato. “And Ianto can, too. But I don’t think Jack would want anyone else to see.”

Making Jack draw the conclusion that whatever reason they weren’t worried about Harkness dying had to do with the man himself, not the Rift.

With a bit of grumbling, Harper agreed to the plan. Sometime later, Sato confirmed that it had worked, and Harkness took the lift down, doodad still in his arms. It was all a bit anti-climactic, really.

Since the Rift was no longer connected to the Stargate system, and there was no handy reliable wormhole in Cardiff, they would have to take the long way round.

“Just let me know when you want to travel, and I’ll sort out your tickets for you,” Jones said.

“Actually, we’ll let the SGC arrange our travel,” Jack told him. It would give the Prometheus a chance to try out the beaming technology in action.

“If you want to come back, you’re more than welcome,” Harkness said. “Any time, day or night.”

"Just make sure you call in advance," said Jones.

"Yeah, you never know what we might be getting up to," Harkness said, and waggled his eyebrows in Jones' direction. Jones rolled his eyes and smirked at him.

Beaming them home via the Prometheus took minutes, which would be very convenient in the future. Forget interplanetary or interstellar travel, imagine what it could do to people's commuting times. World-changing technology, right there.

Debriefing was a joy, as always. Davies was there, since this had to do with the international community and would probably require Pentagon involvement at some point. They went through, in detail, all they knew about Torchwood and what they had been able to do, had known already, and how much SG-1 had been forced to tell them. Throughout it all, Davies and General Hammond looked impassive, but he knew the gears were turning in both their heads. He was glad he wasn't involved in any of this politicking business, and that this was not his problem to solve.

“So,” Jack summarized, “I think the cat’s well out of the bag, and we’re going to have to bring the Brits in on the project, before Harkness tells this UNIT organization and they tell the government. And there’s something going on with Torchwood and Harkness, something weird, so I don’t know if we want to look into that. It does mean spending more time around Harkness, and I don’t envy the poor bastard who gets stuck with that job,” he said, knowing that the poor bastard would probably not be him, since he lacked, you know, knowledge of biology or xenobiology or whatever skills those On High would determine was necessary. He saw Davies’s eye twitch. Good to know – the Harkness effect was not just him. Well, it was going to be an interesting inter-organization collaboration, that was for sure.


End file.
